


Opus Dolore

by sphinxscribe



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Anakin is majorly depressed and not a good father (at first), Catharsis, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, I promise, Obi-Wan is trying his hardest, RotS AU, The Republic still falls and Anakin and Obi-Wan flee with the twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:02:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24254068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sphinxscribe/pseuds/sphinxscribe
Summary: Anakin doesn't turn to the Dark Side, but Padmé still dies. Anakin grieves.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 12
Kudos: 173





	Opus Dolore

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sorry, I do like happy Anidala fics. I promise.

The day after, Anakin sits and stares at the wall in the medical frigate. He doesn’t break and fly into a rage as he had when his mother died. He doesn’t feel anything. He just sits at the edge of his bed, his hands in his lap, and doesn’t feel.

Obi-Wan comes to check on him every few hours, sometimes leaving him a cup of caff or a bowl of something hot. Anakin doesn’t move from his place on his bed, doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t know how long he sits there, except that it must be hours, since meals appear at the table beside him. 

Finally, he feels the corner of his bed dip, and he senses Obi-Wan’s presence beside him.

Obi-Wan is silent for a long while, and then he says, “Don’t you want to see your children?” 

Anakin remembers the weak grip of Padmé’s trembling hand in his, the feeling her cheek cooling under his touch, the look of the light leaving her eyes when the medics couldn’t stop the blood. The image of her body in death—lips parted and pale, belly still round from their children, brown curls splayed across the pillow—is burned into his memory, and the very image of her is so painful that his chest clenches and he feels as though he can’t breathe.

He wants to fade into nonexistence, where there is no pain. He doesn’t want to go on without her. 

“They’re going to make it,” Obi-Wan says. “They’re eating well.”

Anakin realizes that he’s talking about the children—a boy and a girl. They’re tucked away in the sterile natal ward, where they were whisked away immediately after the birth. 

Nausea lurches inside of him when he considers them. He doesn’t want to see them. He can feel Obi-Wan studying him, feel his master’s eyes on him, but if Obi-Wan senses his ambivalence towards them, he doesn’t comment. 

“The medics say they’ll be stable enough to leave soon. We can’t linger here—Palpatine has already issued bounties,” Obi-Wan says. “Bail has already agreed to take Padmé’s body back to Naboo, so her family can prepare the burial.”

The pain swells so severely in his chest that Anakin can’t breathe. He doesn’t think he could say something if he tried. The silence stretches on.

“Please, Anakin, at least eat something,” Obi-Wan says. Then tries again, “Come see your twins. They’re beautiful children—”

“Stop.”

His voice is strained and rusty. 

He feels Obi-Wan’s weight lift from the bed, and his master grips his shoulder. “Come see them,” he tells Anakin. “Your children need their father.”

He leaves, then, and Anakin is once again alone.

He doesn’t know how much longer he sits there, except that soon he is terribly hungry, and the lights have dimmed in his room, which means that it is now nighttime.

He stands slowly, his muscles stiff and cramped, and presses the release on his door. Before he realizes it, he’s standing before the fiberglass bassinets holding the infants. The two of them are small, pink, and wrinkled, and they look much like each other, except that the one with darker wisps of hair is slightly bigger. They’re both fast asleep, buried up to their chins in the white infant blankets.

He doesn’t feel anything when he looks at them. He thinks that someone could come in the room and take them away, and he still wouldn’t feel anything. 

He doesn’t touch them, doesn’t hold them. He goes back to his rooms and lays on the top of his bed, exhausted, but he doesn’t sleep. He stares at the same spot on the wall and wishes he could disappear.

The next morning, Obi-Wan is back. He lingers in the doorway to the room and says, “Bail left for the burial.” 

_With Padmé’s body_ is unsaid. Anakin’s chest tightens. 

Obi-Wan takes a few steps closer, his boots _clunking_ on the floor. “It’ll be a state-held funeral in Theed. For the safety of Padmé’s family and your children, she will still appear with child… we may not be able to fool Palpatine forever, but hopefully it will at least buy us a few years.”

Obi-Wan waits for Anakin to reply, but when Anakin doesn’t give him one, he continues, “We can’t stay here any longer. The medics just confirmed the babies are healthy enough to travel—”

“I’m going to Theed.”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan begins, and Anakin hears the exhaustion in his voice. “It’s too risky.”

“I don’t care.”

“It’s the very place Palpatine will expect you to go. You’ll be shot on sight, or captured and taken to Coruscant—”

“So what?”

Obi-Wan stares at him. He has dark circles under his eyes. “Do you _want_ to get yourself killed? Or worse.”

Anakin clenches his jaw. He senses Obi-Wan growing more frustrated the longer he remains silent.

“We are trying to help you here,” Obi-Wan says. “But you must want to help yourself—”

“What’s the point?” Anakin shouts, lurching to his feet. Suddenly he’s very, very angry. He towers over Obi-Wan. “What’s the point of any of it anymore?”

“Your children _need you_ —they already lost one parent—”

“The Republic is dead, the Order is dead! Everything we fought for years has turned to _ash—_ ”

“We have not given up hope, and neither should you,” Obi-Wan snaps, throat raw. “I need you _here_ , Anakin. Your children need you _here_. We cannot let Palpatine get away with all he’s done.”

Anakin just doesn’t care anymore. He could live or die and he wouldn’t care. He collapses back down on the bed, exhaustion in every bone of his body.

He wonders what might have happened if he’d pledged himself to Palpatine. Perhaps he could’ve learned the powers of the Dark Side. Perhaps Palpatine, in his corruption and duplicity and greed, _could_ have helped, and Padmé would still be alive right now. Perhaps his current reality would be nothing more than a terrible dream. 

He regrets the deaths of all the younglings and Jedi in the Temple and on the battlefields that day. But more than that, he regrets that his wife was taken from him. A terrible, dark part of him knows that if he could go back, he would trade their lives for hers in a heartbeat. 

But it’s too late now. Padmé’s gone, and Anakin has once again let someone he loved slip through his hands like the sands of Tatooine. 

Padmé’s body will be taken back to her family, and Anakin knows they’ll feel only heartbreak and confusion at the lack of answers. He feels like he owes them something, but he doesn’t know what. It’s his fault she didn’t make it. They should have never fallen in love.

His throat is tight, but his eyes are dry. He feels numb.

“Come on,” Obi-Wan says, gripping his shoulder. “It’s time to go.”

Anakin has no fight left in him, so he lets Obi-Wan lead him from the room. The medcenter is quiet—the medical droids have all powered down, and only one Twi’lek medic moves about the medical ward, tending to the infants.

“Yoda left to bring back some survivors on Felucia,” Obi-Wan tells him in a low voice. “Bail will be sending word later—there are quite a few senators who oppose Palpatine’s new regime, and they’re forming a delegation. We’ll go into hiding for a few weeks, until things have stabilized.”

Stabilized. Anakin hates the word. Nothing could “stabilize”—everything had shattered. 

The Twi’lek medic approaches them, rolling the glass bassinets with the infants. “Your children are stable,” she says. “They’ll need milk every few hours in order to gain healthy weight, but they are strong enough to travel.”

Anakin sees the girl and the boy are awake now, their eyes barely open, their small fists flailing under the blanket that wraps them. He realizes he doesn’t even know which child is which. 

“Which is the boy?” he asks, and Obi-Wan steps closer.

“This is your son,” he says, motioning to the smaller baby with light wisps on the crown of his head. “And she’s your daughter.” 

Anakin’s daughter squirms under his scrutiny. She has dark hair, the same shade as her mother’s, and the same pink nose and lips.

“Do you want to hold them?” Obi-Wan asks.

Anakin doesn’t. He feels nothing as he looks at them, and too much. 

Obi-Wan is quiet for a long time. Then he says, “They need names, Anakin. Did you and Padmé ever…?”

They had. They’d already discussed it all—what they would name their child if it were a boy or girl, where they would raise the baby, how their careers would work after the birth. Padmé was going to quit the Senate and go to Naboo, and Anakin—well, Anakin had thought he would leave the Order. Anakin had once looked forward to this future, to raising a child.

Now everything had changed. 

“Luke and Leia,” he tells Obi-Wan, and then he leaves to pack his things.

They board an inconspicuous ship of Bail Organa’s, and Obi-Wan sets course for Er’Kit, a desert Outer Rim territory where Organa has arranged a safe house for them to hide. 

Anakin sits in the pilot’s chair as Obi-Wan does the final cabin check. The twins are secured in the cabin, bundled up and fast asleep. 

They leave the system safely, and soon they are drifting through hyperspace, well on their way towards Er’Kit. In the copilot’s chair, Obi-Wan dozes, chin sunk into chest. Anakin hasn’t seen his master rest since they fled Coruscant, and realizes he must be exhausted. 

Anakin still can’t sleep. He stares out the viewport at the blue swirling of stars streaming past their ship, wishing it would swallow him up. His chest aches as if it’s being slowly wrung out.

Then, he hears a small cry in the back of the ship towards the cabin. 

He does nothing at first, but then he hears the cry again. A tiny, weak tendril flails in the Force, like a wisp of smoke. One of the twins.

Anakin knows one baby will likely wake the other, and then they’ll have two wailing children in the small, cramped space—he’d seen it happen often enough in the Jedi crèche. So when the baby cries a third time and Obi-Wan doesn’t stir, he puts the ship on autopilot and leaves the cockpit to find them. 

It’s the boy who’s awake, his face scrunched up and his mouth wide with the start of a silent wail. His feet kick beneath his blanket as Anakin hovers over him. He looks miserable, like he wants to scream but doesn’t know how. 

He looks so much like Anakin, with his blond hair and cleft chin, but he has Padmé’s round face. Her son. _Their_ son. 

Something deep wrenches in Anakin’s gut, something intense and painful and so sudden that he nearly sobs. He reaches out with trembling fingers and lays a palm on his son’s head. The skin is soft and covered with soft, downy hairs.

The boy whimpers. As gently as he can, Anakin lifts him out of his bassinet and up to his chest. 

He can’t see his son’s face, but he feels the boy calm. His presence, like his sister’s, is a sun in the Force—radiant and dazzlingly bright and almost painful to witness. 

Anakin had thought the boy had perhaps been hungry, or needing a change, but he quiets as soon as Anakin tucks him into his neck. Anakin presses a cheek to his son’s head, and notices that he smells new, a smell that makes Anakin want to hold him forever. 

The sob he thought he’d suppressed lurches in him again, so sudden and unbidden that it startles him. And suddenly he’s weeping—for Padmé, for the memories they won’t share, for their children who’ll be brought up without her. That she’ll never be able to hold her children close as he does now.

He clutches Luke to his chest—her _son_ , who she named—and allows the tears to fall. How could he have ever doubted his love for his children? They’re all he has left of his wife. 

His chest still aches as though it’s been broken in two, but now a fierce, snarling beast rises up in him. Suddenly, he’s more certain than anything before that he’ll protect his children with everything he is, even at the cost of his life, now and for the rest of his days.

His daughter, Leia, is still fast asleep in her bassinet, and Anakin’s throat tightens as he watches her. He has the sudden irrational impulse to gather her into his arms as well, but he forces it down. He has no desire to wake her. Instead, he presses his lips to her forehead and sets a gentle hand on her belly, feeling it rise and fall with quick breaths. 

He brushes away the tears that fall as he studies them and sees both himself and Padmé in their children—in the planes of their face, in the shape of their eyes and the curve of their mouths. And when Luke has fallen back asleep, he places the two of them in the same bassinet and lays on the shuttle floor beside them.

He knows that Obi-Wan will likely find him still laying here later, that Obi-Wan will tease him for being so protective, or, even worse, just smile his knowing smile as he fixes his morning caff. But Anakin can’t bring himself to care. He stays awake for a long time, his gaze fixed in wonder on his children, checking their breathing so frequently that he wonders if he’s gone insane. 

He can feel their peaceful presence in the Force, soft and so bright, resting gently against his, and before he knows it, he’s fallen asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I need to stop ending fics with characters falling asleep. Maybe time to stop writing fic at night. 
> 
> Reviews/kudos are loved! Come visit me on tumblr [@sphinxscribe](https://sphinxscribe.tumblr.com).


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